In the Waiting Room
by Knackard
Summary: Until their brother and his human girlfriend conceived a half-vampire baby, Emmett and Rosalie believed they could never be parents. Now they've got options, and hope—and a whole lot of waiting to do. Essentially canon-compliant.


****This story takes place in my _Long Long Long_ universe, in which (for reasons that I laid out in the short A/N to Chapter 2 of my fic, _Living in the Sun_), vampire-human mating can occur only when the human's blood sings to the vampire. For reasons I no longer remember, I also swapped out the one-month-gestation for a period of three months. **Thanks for reading and reviewing this little one-off ! ******

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><p><em>Rosalie looked down at her hands, her cheeks subtly dimpling even though her mouth wasn't specifically smiling.<em>

_"What is it?" Bella asked, reaching out to touch the back of her hand._

_Rosalie looked up at her sister and smiled shakily. "I'm so glad Edward met you," she said. "I'm so glad you two found each other. Even if you'd decided not to...well, even if you didn't keep Ness, now we know. I know. This is possible. I may not be able to pass my genes along, but that doesn't mean I can't still be a mother. I can even be mother to Em's child. That's more than I ever expected! The best-case scenario for decades has been that someday we might adopt a human child and offer it the choice of becoming like us when it's old enough. And that scenario scares me witless. What if once, just once in the decades of that human's life, one of the family slipped? What if I slipped? What if I murdered my own child? I'm sure I wouldn't—but what if I did? I could break a child's bones just by failing to be gentle enough for one second. Or what if our child chose not to become like us? I wouldn't make that choice, if I had it to make now. I would just watch my child grow old and die, and for the rest of my eternity I would miss her; or I would see her give up the precious gift of her own humanity, and perhaps I could never forgive myself for that. But this—oh, Bella, Ness isn't like us, she's human, she really is, and she didn't have to give anything up! She's human, but she's_ _more than human, too.__ The__ danger now is that I'm going to get ahead of myself. We've no idea how this will turn out. I mustn't get carried away. A part of me wants to go out immediately and start looking for women whose blood sings to Emmett. We could do that. But…"_

_She looked at Bella, her eyes shining with hope and fear._

_"But then what?" she finished in a whisper._

* * *

><p>Emmett grips Rosalie's hand and takes the tiniest of breaths. His mouth floods with venom and it is everything he can do not to break into a shocking run—either toward the source of that scent, or away from it. But Rosalie's hand is steady in his. She squeezes his fingers a fraction. If she were another sort of woman, perhaps one more like Esme or Bella, that squeeze would say, <em>I'm here for you; we're together in this<em>. From Alice, _Don't worry, brother, you'll be all right. I can tell_. Coming from Rosalie, that squeeze means, _I will pull off your favorite body parts and reattach them wrong if you screw this up. Do not even dare._

It is why he loves her. Adores her. Worships her. Wants to be the father of her children. And that is why they are here, in one of the shittier neighborhoods of Paris. Because if Emmett is to be the father of Rosalie Hale's children, they are going to need to find a biological mother.

"Are we getting close?" asks Rosalie. Emmett nods minutely. How in the name of all holiness did Edward manage to do this for _two years_ without killing Bella? He takes another tiny breath—almost takes in too much of that scent, almost loses himself in it, but Rosalie pulls him back, _do not even dare_—and follows the trail of it through a bustle of people and into an alleyway.

The scent is strongest in the low, filthy arch of a doorway, where a bundle of rags is sleeping fretfully. The bundle is young, but not too young. The bundle is a woman, not a girl. But only just.

Emmett catches Rosalie's eye and nods once, curtly. She takes a deep breath, storing away that scent for later use, and they flee, hand in hand.

* * *

><p>This process has been going on for just about ever. Except it hasn't been that long, not really. Bella Swan got pregnant eleven years ago (and three months, and twenty-six days, Emmett knows because he's counted every day since he learned that parenthood is not a total impossibility for their kind). That's hardly anything. Eleven years is the time it takes a vampire to sneeze, really.<p>

As soon as it became apparent that Bella and Edward's baby was going to be healthy and sturdy and not die in three minutes like a human would (three minutes, _comparatively_), Rosalie and Emmett began the process of becoming parents. It started out as a pretty straightforward search: find a woman of childbearing years whose blood sings to Emmett, offer her the moon in exchange for her surrogacy and one egg, just one! And possibly her life. Hence the offer of _Payment: one Moon_.

Complications arose. For one thing, cantantes are insanely hard to find. Emmett knows what sings to him, and Edward knows (because he's been right there in Emmett's memory), but that's two people to comb the whole world in search of that elusive scent. Edward finally found it: not a woman of childbearing years, alas, but a little boy in Macau. But Edward had Ness with him, and her gift is so well-trained it can transmit scent. She shared the scent of the little boy around the family and (for good measure) the Denalis and a few nomadic family friends who wanted to help, and the cantantes started rolling in. Or trickling, at least.

Seven years after the start of their search, they found a likely candidate in Australia, a college student, healthy, sympathetic. They talked to the girl, asked this impossible thing of her, and when she said not _no_ but _maybe,_ they began negotiations. They would pay for her to finish school. All the school she desired; if she wanted to go all the way through multiple PhD's, she could do so free of student loans. It was an attractive offer. And then, just before anything was signed, Emmett slipped, took a breath in the girl's presence. Of course there were five pairs of hands ready to restrain him, but the girl saw him for what he is beneath that orgasmically good-looking face: a monster, a living nightmare. She withdrew.

Emmett doesn't blame her. Finally, eleven years into this process, they've made contact again. This candidate—the young woman from the alleyway—is a Cameroonian named Solange, a confirmed cantante of childbearing years. She started out no more than cautiously amenable to the plan, but Rosalie and Ness have been working on her. On top of considerable monetary compensation, she wants French citizenship for herself, her mother and her two older siblings. She would have stopped there, but Rosalie likes her a lot and knows this is a terrible thing to ask. So she went on to offer free schooling for every member of Solange's nuclear family who wants it, as long as they want it, no matter where, no matter when. This pretty much sealed the deal. Solange signed the contract months ago and began the preliminary process of getting up to full reproductive health. Insemination attempts begin today. Rosalie is with Solange. So are Bella, Ness and Edward. Alice and Jasper are there to keep an eye on things and keep Solange's nerves in check. Carlisle is performing the procedure.

Esme stayed behind with Emmett. She is sitting with him in the garden behind the rowhouse Emmett and Rosalie occupy in Paris. The drama that contains Emmett's whole future is all unfolding a few houses away, in Carlisle's home office. The procedure will have started a few minutes ago. Emmett keeps glancing at his phone, checking the time, hoping to have received a text with some positive information, even they won't know for days whether this worked. Weeks.

_If_ it works.

"What's on your mind?" says Esme, digging her fingers carefully under the roots of a weed and tugging it gently from the soil. She tosses it onto a heap of compost.

"If this works," says Emmett, "which it better or God'll have Rose to answer to, the best case scenario is that I miss my kid's entire gestation."

Esme regards him thoughtfully. "That is hard," she agrees. "But it will be over in a few months, if all goes well. You certainly won't miss your kid's childhood."

"It's more than that," says Emmett. "Ness heard Bella and Edward through the womb. She came out already knowing their voices. She came out knowing my voice, even. But this one won't ever have heard my voice at all. I'll be a stranger."

"Human infants don't know their father's voices," says Esme. "They still manage to bond."

"This isn't a human infant. Or...not _isn't_. Won't be, I guess. I want to start bonding _now_. Right away. I want to talk to my kid. I want it to know my voice. Instead I have to sit over here at the reject table while everyone else watches my baby get conceived and checked-up and born. I know that's the way it has to be, but damn it, Mom, I'm not a robot, and I've been waiting for this for almost a century. I want to _be_ there."

Esme ponders. "You know we're documenting as much of it as we decently can," she says.

"I know," says Emmett. He looks down at a photograph of Solange, the first in what will hopefully be a long line of photographs recording this pregnancy. One of the first questions Solange asked Rosalie was, _Won't you be upset when it doesn't look like you?_ This child will certainly look nothing like the blonde and fair-skinned Rosalie. Solange has dark brown skin and a weightless nebula of tightly-curling black hair. Where Rosalie has blooming, delicate features, Disney-princess eyes, luxuriant curves, Solange has striking wide cheekbones and full, almost graphic lips, narrow black eyes and a tall and skinny frame. Solange is not only renting out her womb, she's donating half the kid's genes. Both Emmett and Rosalie agree that she is beautiful, and that, furthermore, she could be ugly as sin for all they care; nothing could make them love her genetic offspring any less. So when she said that to Rosalie, all she got in reply was an incredulous laugh.

Of course, the child _will_ resemble Emmett. At least a little bit.

"It's not me I'm worried about," Emmett finally says to his mother. "I want my kid to know me as early as possible. Maybe it's unreasonable. But I want to be involved."

Esme thinks about this for a few minutes.

"Well," she says after a while, "you know you can't go near Solange. Not after what happened in Melbourne. But you could make recordings of your voice, couldn't you? Messages to the baby. Or just record yourself reading the dictionary. Ed's got all that equipment from when he was wooing Bella. That was super-audio. I'm sure it will be recognizable as your voice."

Emmett has not thought of this. Recordings. He can start reading to his child before it's even born.

* * *

><p>Later, when Rosalie returns home, all either of them can manage to do is talk in endlessly repeating circles about their hopes and fears for this baby. Eventually Emmett's mind slips away from the conversation, because he is daydreaming about what might be in his future, a paltry three or four months away. He responds absently to Rosalie's comments until she notices he's not paying attention.<p>

"...Just need to keep our spirits up," she is saying.

"Yes, dear."

"This will work," says Rosalie.

"Yes, dear."

"I can feel it. We learned from the other ones. We know what to do now. She won't be in danger."

"Yes, dear."

"You say 'yes dear' one more time and I'll bite your lips off."

"Is that a promise?" Emmett hopes it is a promise.

"Yes, dear."

Then they proceed to keep up their spirits until the sun rises.

* * *

><p>Rosalie breathes for a long while. "I want this so bad," she whispers. "I'm so scared it'll never happen."<p>

"It'll happen. When it's meant to. I know it will."

"'When it's meant to'? Since when do you believe in fate?" says Rosalie, looking up and up and into his eyes.

"Not fate, necessarily," he clarifies. "I just know some things have a right time and a wrong time. Everything important in our life has been like that. Like meeting on the side of that mountain." He's not talking about the day he was mauled by a bear and Rosalie carried him over a hundred miles to Carlisle to be turned. He's talking about the day they _first_ met, a few weeks before the mauling. On that day he knew without having to be told that the beautiful girl with hair like a comb full of sun-dripped honey would scare if he didn't approach her carefully, like a frighty colt. She wouldn't even make eye contact at first, and then he made a joke that got her to laugh and it was the biggest his heart had ever felt in his whole entire human life, those two seconds of Rosalie Hale's laughter. Deep down in the darks of his soul, he knew even then that no woman's flirting smile would ever hold a light for him again, he was one thousand percent sure of it, and he was right.

"I almost didn't go hiking that day. I almost had to stay home." Which of course she knows. "But something made us meet, and something'll make us parents."

"Do you really think so?" she asks.

"I am one thousand percent sure."

* * *

><p>For seven days the family waits on tenterhooks. They don't really know how long it will take to know, so they settle for a pregnancy test every day.<p>

On the eighth day, Solange is pregnant. It is as easy as that. Finding a cantante was the hard part; it seems that once that has been accomplished the compatibility of the genetic material is quite explosively assured.

From this moment, Solange is under constant care. Even more thorough than Bella's, because unlike Bella Solange will not have the option of being transformed into a vampire when all this is done. They have not even informed her that that is what they are. As far as she knows, it is some rare genetic mutation that will cause this pregnancy to be so dramatically rushed. She probably doesn't believe this, probably knows there is information that is being held back from her, but she has been given all of the information that she needs to have, and a great deal that she doesn't. She seems, for the most part, satisfied.

For a while it was debated whether it ought to be made known to Solange that she will be incubating a creature much like Ness. Ness is a splendid ambassador for hybrid children. In fact, too splendid: practically every human being or vampire who meets her is besotted with her in minutes. The famiy decides against it. They want it to be easy for Solange to walk away from this. She has assured them all that she has no interest in being a mother, especially at her age and without a husband, and it is written into her contract that after delivery she will have no claim on the child, legal or otherwise. Pretty standard surrogacy agreement, really. Still, why point out what she'll be missing? Why even go there? So as far as Solange knows, Ness is the same as everyone else.

Emmett is still a little bit afraid that Solange will grow too attached. Being cut off from the pregnancy in this way has made him afraid of all sorts of obstacles arising. Until he's holding his newborn son or daughter in his arms, he won't feel comfortable at all.

"You won't feel comfortable for a long time after that, either," says Bella when Emmett mentions this to her. "But it's a pretty nice sort of uncomfortable."

* * *

><p>Everyone in the family, even Edward and Jasper who should know better, are under the impression that Rosalie is more interested in parenthood than Emmett simply because she's louder about it. This shows that no one in the family understands either Emmett or Rosalie as well as those two understand each other. If he's being totally honest, this is the way Emmett likes it. Edward knew Rosie first, to be sure, and their relationship is a loving and close one. Rosalie shares certain bonds with Bella and Alice that are naturally lacking with Emmett, because they are her sisters. Her relationships with Carlisle and Esme, Jasper, Renesmee: these are special and unique relationships, but as far as Emmett is concerned she is <em>his<em>, and his alone.

When he was alive, Emmett assumed that he would one day get married and have a family and probably take up farming, since that was what he knew. Rosalie was heartbroken when her human life was stolen from her; Emmett was elated. His human life was perfectly fine. His family was good to him, they weathered the first years of the Depression relatively well. He never went hungry. He never went unloved. Unlike Rosalie, he never had the slightest reason to believe that he was loved for some stupid reason like his looks. He may have been no more than a modest farmboy from Tennessee, but his life was golden. And he's not sorry it's gone.

Where in that farmboy's life was there room for travel to every continent on the globe? Where in that farmboy's life was there time for six Master's degrees and three PhDs? For an imagination bigger than the toiling needs of agriculture? For the thousands of books he could never possibly read between harvest season and planting season? For the things he would build, the things he would climb, the things he would learn?

More than all those things, where in fragile Emmett McCarty's life was there room for _her?_

No, Emmett does not hold his human life on a pedestal, because this one is better. This one has Rosalie. He misses his first family, in a way; but Emmett was never sentimental. He used his new strength and connections to ensure that the McCarty family throve without him, and that was enough for him. They recovered from his loss reasonably well; the death of a farmboy in rural Gatlinburg in the Thirties was hardly the tragedy that it was in Rochester, when it happened to the world's most beautiful debutante. When he died, it was not hard to relinquish his hold on living hopes and fears.

The only human desire that clung stubbornly to Emmett's new unbeating heart was the longing for children. In fact, as a human he was mildly indifferent to the idea, and assumed that he'd know when he was ready for it—that fatherhood would start to mean something to him when it became a reality, and not a minute sooner. In a way, that's what happened. He didn't want children until he wanted _her_ children.

Another fact unknown and largely unsuspected by their loving family: Emmett and Rosalie did not have sex for nearly a decade after he was turned.

They did things that closely resembled sex. They did things that might easily have segued into sex. Sex or no sex, they were unbelievably annoying to be around because they _could not stop kissing_. So Emmett certainly understands why the Cullens mostly shunted the two youngest out of the house and out of the way in those early years. They were an unstoppable force of lips and tongues. Unspeakably boring to anyone not involved.

Emmett had technically been a virgin when he was transformed. Rosalie had too, but a traumatized virgin, a raped virgin, a virgin turned off of sex for a good long time. (Emmett, with his oh-so-practical farmboy morality, was firm in his belief that virtue cannot be taken by force; Rosalie was a virgin when she came to him, no matter what any preacher or physician might say.) Emmett may be massive, but he's gentle. He's patient. For years Rosalie would try to make herself do something her heart wasn't ready to do, and she'd apologize over and over again: _I'm so sorry, I can't do this, but still I love you, please believe I love you…_

As if his love for her was predicated upon her body. When he heard these frantic, ashamed apologies, he was ashamed himself. Had he so fundamentally failed in convincing her of his adoration that she thought sex, or lack of sex, could have any possible effect on his devotion? Sure he _wanted_ it, of course he wanted it. Sometimes he thought he might explode for lack of it. But his want for her to be happy and whole loomed over his want for sex, cast it in shadow, made it small and forgettable. Until she was ready and eager and excited, he could damn well wait; he had hands and imagination just like anyone, and he wasn't too proud to use them.

* * *

><p>Solange first shows a bump only a week after the test comes back positive. Those weeks sped by on eagle wings, but trudged slowly too. Emmett wishes that he could sleep through this. The waiting is agonizing. Instead he starts nesting in a way Rosalie is not free to do (since she's spending most of her time with Solange and coming home to Emmett only at night).<p>

Emmett keeps himself busy like this:

First he takes apart the entire first floor of the row home he and Rosalie are living in. Esme helps him in this, since architecture is really more her jam than his. But he does so much want to be doing something with his hands that he won't turn it over to her completely.

Having demolished the majority of his house, he puts it back together, fortified and sturdy enough for an inhumanly strong baby. The first floor will be the baby's floor. They're planning to stay in Paris for the first year of the baby's life, since they've only been here three so far. So Emmett makes sure that the baby's rooms will be able to get that child up through what would, in a human, be toddlerhood. There's a crib which Emmett puts together himself, although if Ness was anything to go by no way will that baby have to sleep anywhere other than in a relative's arms, ever. He and Alice and Rosalie spend one whole night painting every room on that floor in a different color, hand-selected by Emmett (and informed by his many, many psychology degrees and Alice's innate understanding of color and mood) to suit the function of each room. Is it overkill to paint the bedroom green for restfulness, the atrium blue for serenity, the playroom sun-yellow for cheer? Yes, probably. What the hell else is Emmett going to do? If he can't go a little overboard preparing his home for this much-wished-for child, then what is the point?

After all this, Emmett begins to build large quantities of toys for the baby to grow into. They won't know the baby's gender until it's born, but Emmett doesn't bother with gendered baby toys anyway. Geometric blocks made of scrap wood from the renovation, sanded and painted in a hundred colors. A doll, whittled from wood and snugly wrapped in a soft green receiving blanket. Mobiles to hang all over the house, depicting trains, planes and automobiles. Planets and rockets. Snowflakes. Leaves of trees. Flowers. Emmett makes two mobiles bearing the names they have fixed upon for the baby. Adam Emory Hale if it's a boy. Samantha Rose Hale if it's a girl. Emmett and Rosalie agreed long ago that since their baby will have Emmett's genes it should have Rosalie's surname.

Eventually, the baby's rooms are painted and furnished and child-proofed and there is nothing left for Emmett to do, and Solange could pop at any moment, or in a week, or in a month. Emmett sets up Edward's high-falutin' recording equipment in the baby's play room and stands before the wall-sized bookshelf, considering. With a smile, he pulls down _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_, and begins to read.

* * *

><p>Rosalie sits with Solange in the large suite of rooms on the first floor of Esme and Carlisle's house, which has been given over entirely to the pregnant woman. There is a part of Rosalie which is sad, and sorry, and guilty that she cannot imagine how to go on being friends with this woman yet still expect to keep the mothering of the Solange's genetic offspring all to herself. Does she have to choose, really? Could she go on talking to Solange, writing to her, meeting her for lunch and coffee on cloudy days? Would it be too cruel to the woman, always knowing that Rosalie has just come from the company of a child that is half-Solange? The young woman swears up and down that she has absolutely no desire to be a mother right now. But things may change. She may find that she falls in love with this child which is only now showing itself as a gentle swelling in her abdomen. Rosalie fell in love with it before it was even conceived. She wouldn't blame its biological mother for doing the same.<p>

This is what occupies most of her thoughts when she leaves Solange to let the girl sleep or eat or have some privacy. Rosalie has no idea what to do about it.

Once, Jasper finds Rosalie sitting on the roof of her house, watching the sun sink over Paris.

"What's eatin' you?" he says, sitting companionably beside her.

Rosalie explains, shamefacedly, what her concerns are. Jasper is silent for a while.

"I could mebbe help," he says. "Might be I could put a little weight on one side of Solange's feelings. I don't feel anything off her that looks like what you're feeling, that longing. I feel a little something almost like longing, but it comes off more like...impatience, I guess."

"Is that a good sign?" Rosalie has the utmost respect for Jasper's understanding of human emotions. He senses fewer specifics than Edward does, but more truths. After all, you can lie to yourself in thought, but not in feeling.

"Not sure," admits her brother. "I wasn't gettin' anything for a while, since Bella's been here. But she and Ed just took off for a little weekender in Toulouse."

Bella's impact on the Cullen family is significant. When she was a human, her main interest to them was that she could not be "worked on", as Alice liked to put it. She had a shield, but the shield could only protect her. This meant that Bella was the only person free of the awkwardness that resulted from a family which included a mind reader, an empath and a psychic. The worst of it was probably Edward's mind-reading. He hated having to hear everyone's thoughts all the time, and they hated having no privacy, but what could they do? Bella was the one with the shield, not them.

Then she'd been turned under circumstances as close to a crucible as they could be, and her shield had exploded into something of a weapon of mass destruction. She learned—quickly, immediately, instinctively—to cast her shield over her new family, let it cling to them as it clung to her. Under her shield, they became as immune to Edward's mind-reading and Jasper's empathy as she was.

It was a gift to the Cullens not unlike the gift of fire must have been to early man. Edward walked around with helium in his feet and wings at his back, delighted and thrilled by his newfound liberation from the intrusions of other minds. Jasper, traditionally the most unstable of the family, began to understand what life is like without forever having to feel when someone nearby is bored, hungry, lonely. Alice barely even seemed crazy at all anymore. When they go out in public, Bella lifts the shield so that Alice will be able to tell if there is danger, so that Edward will be able to hear any threat to their family. But at home, under Bella's shield, the Cullens can finally be free. Even if Bella weren't generally kind and thoughtful and sympathetic and more or less intelligent, she'd be a welcome addition to the family roster. Her affect on Cullen morale is practically legendary.

And even Bella, sainted Bella, savior of their sanity, comes nowhere near Ness in preciousness. Ness, originally christened Laelia Charlotte but quickly nicknamed The Loch Ness Baby by friend-of-the-family Jacob Black, is treated like a living crown jewel. Not spoiled, never that: indeed, to spoil her she'd have to be spoilable, which she eminently isn't. She is universally adored, it's true. But the modern style of childrearing which relies so very heavily on excessive encouragement and praise—well, that's a style that no one in the family would ever think of emulating. Bella herself was not raised in that style, instead having to become her own mother at an astonishingly early age and being raised on books instead of attention. Edward grew up under the deprivations of a world war and its ensuing fallout. Rosalie was made quite a pet out of in her childhood, but see how that turned out: she is the last person to elaborately worship a girl child for her beauty and perfection, knowing as she does how much damage can be done in that way. Esme, Emmett and Jasper were all farmers' children with too many siblings for them to be singled out for spoilage. Carlisle wore a hairshirt. Although she was primarily raised by Edward and Bella (and, to an extent her cousin Jake), Ness was really raised by a village who loved her extravagantly but spoiled her little.

Rosalie becomes aware that Jasper is still waiting for an answer to his offer.

"I could sorter give her a little wash of indifference, mebbe," he says. "Just a tetch, nothin' too obvious."

It is tempting. But it wouldn't be right. "Solange is doing so much for us," she says. "It would be a poor repayment, blunting her emotions for my own peace of mind. Thank you for the offer, Jas dear, but all the same I think I'd better let it lie."

* * *

><p>Solange is sitting half-reclined on her couch, with Alice and Esme and Rosalie hovering around her like attendants. A CD is being played, the speaker set up right next to Solange's belly.<p>

"...One I always liked," Emmett's deep voice is saying over the speaker. "You probably won't find it funny just yet, because you're still a fetus and I wouldn't guess you have much of a sense of humor yet, but just wait till you're out. This is funny stuff. Okay. This one is called _The Elephant's Child_, by Rudyard Kipling. 'In the high and far-off times the Elephant, O best-beloved,' that's you, kid, 'the Elephant had no trunk...'"

Rosalie allows herself to sink into the sound of Emmett's voice. He is quite good at this sort of thing. He has a different voice for every character. He puts a little burst of enthusiasm into his voice whenever something particularly funny happens. Rosalie finds herself laughing along with the girls at Emmett's rendering of the Just-So Story.

"Your baby's going to have a lot of fun," says Solange contentedly, rubbing her bulging belly. "Lots of babysitters, I bet."

"I expect you're quite right," agrees Rosalie.

* * *

><p>Solange has been confined to bed rest. There may be another couple of weeks of her confinement to get through, but she simply must be off her feet for them. Ness was born at three months and ten days. Solange has just passed three months and Emmett can hardly bear to wait another minute.<p>

But he has no choice. It's another sixteen days before Solange's labor begins. Emmett hears the whole thing: Solange is crying, screaming, afraid. She is given an epidural, which relieves the pain, but she is still afraid.

Emmett hears Esme comforting Solange, hears Carlisle ordering the others about, hears a wet slopping sound, and there is silence for what feels like ten years. Why is there silence? Emmett can't bear this; he rushes to the front door and throws it open, stares down the street toward his parents' house. If something has gone wrong, he may lose his mind. Nothing must go wrong.

Then there is a slap and a lusty infant scream, and Emmett nearly collapses, his fingers digging into the wooden doorframe, his massive form limp and helpless from terror and relief.

_Come on, come on_, he thinks, _come on, come on_…

The front door of Carlisle and Esme's house is opening, and a parade marches out and toward Emmett. Emmett doesn't even notice which of his siblings have emerged and which have stayed behind to see to Solange. He has eyes only for Rosalie and the bundle in her arms. The receiving blanket is white as snow; it contrasts gorgeously with the soft brown of the mewling cargo it holds. Rosalie's eyes are trained on that bundle like beacons, and she smiles. Rosalie's smile could work miracles in the world. Rosalie's smile is a prism, it catches the light of all her feelings and shatters it into a thousand beams of meaning. Any baby is lucky, if that smile is the first thing it gets to see. In Rosalie's arms Emmett has an impression of enormous black eyes and dark brown curls, still plastered to that tiny sticky scalp.

Rosalie is before him. She is glowing in the sunlight. They all are. Anyone could see.

"Em," she says in a tremble, "meet Adam."

And then the infant is being passed to Emmett, and he is looking into his son's deep dark eyes and wondering how on earth he will ever be enough for this perfect infant. Adam is so small, so unimaginably small. There can be nothing on earth smaller than this tiny baby, who could practically be contained in one hand. _Atom_, thinks Emmett, and grins.

"Hello, Atom," he says. His voice is deep and rumbly, and for a second Adam's dark eyes widen and Emmett is terribly afraid he's just alarmed his son. Then Adam's dainty small mouth curls into a dimpled grin that is so like Emmett's it is like looking in a mirror. And he knows that everything will be alright.

They turn and walk into the house, Rosalie and Emmett and Adam. Their siblings watch them go, wait for the door to close between them before they begin whispering together about what it all means, what will happen, how this will change their lives.

Emmett and Rosalie walk as if in a trance to the baby's bedroom. Rosalie begins to prepare a bottle for him, knowing he must be hungry. Emmett sits in the rocking chair. By the time Rosalie has warmed the bottle of blood, Adam is fast asleep, rocked into dreaming by the father who can't wait to start knowing him.


End file.
